See What You Might Look Like in 30 Years With These ‘Genetic Portraits’

Sure, you’ve been told many times how you look just like your mother, or how hard it is to tell you and your brother apart. But how often do you believe those comments? It’s easy to brush off these opinions without hard evidence that you actually look like your family.

Graphic designer and self-taught photographer Ulric Collettetakes a hands-on approach to familial similarities in his ongoing series Portraits Génétiques, or Genetic Portraits. In the series Collette combines photos of two members of the same family in split-screen portraits. The series reveals physical similarities between siblings and between parents and their children while exploring the profound role genetics play in our lives. In some cases it’s almost impossible to tell brothers apart or distinguish mother from daughter, while other portraits seem to peer into a parent’s past or a child’s future. I bet that if you mimicked Collette’s style to combine your own portrait with that of your mother or father, you’d gain a glimpse into how you will look 30 years down the line. Like it or not, genetics will always tie us to our families.